Tate's Nigerian Modernism full of vitality, richness and exuberance
- timeless travels
- 21 hours ago
- 3 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
By Theresa Thompson, Timeless Travels' Art Correspondent
Ben Enwonwu, The Dancer (Agbogho Mmuo - Maiden Spirit Mask) 1962
© Ben Enwonwu Foundation, courtesy Ben Uri Gallery & Museum
Up on the 4th floor of Tate Modern’s original galleries, there is the groundbreaking Nigerian Modernism exhibition. In contrast to the celebration of the performative art of Picasso, one of the most famous figures in the European art world, this is a celebration of the far less known, yet vivid and eclectic, modern art of Nigeria: they make an interesting dynamic.
Fittingly opening during Black History Month, Nigerian Modernism is the first ever UK exhibition to trace the development of modern art in Nigeria. It presents the work of over 50 artists across 50 years, from Ben Enwonwu to El Anatsui, and with 250 works on show including loans from institutions and private collections across Africa, Europe and the US: it is an enormous and ambitious show.
With a timeline starting in the 1940s amidst calls for decolonisation across Africa and its diaspora, the exhibition takes the visitor up to the 1980s in its display of a diverse array of works from pivotal periods in the country’s recent history. We learn how, in the 1940s with the Nigerian education system under British governance, many artists trained in Britain, thereby adopting some European artistic techniques and witnessing Western modernism’s fixation on African art.
We meet globally celebrated artists of the period, from Ben Enwonwu to Ladi Kwali, who combined their Western training with Nigerian visual art traditions. For instance, Ladi Kwali (c.1925-1984) a pioneering ceramicist whose new style of ceramic art synthesised traditional Gwarri techniques and European studio pottery, and who has a whole room dedicated to her fabulous pots.
Ladi Kwali, Water pot (undated).© Estate of Ladi Kwali. Crafts Study Centre, University for the Creative Art.
And, Ben Enwonwu (1917-1994), painter and sculptor – he apparently preferred being called a sculptor – the first Nigerian artist to receive an international education and to gain international recognition, who is given pride of place in the second gallery. Here, his splendid seven wooden sculptures created in 1961 for the Daily Mirror’s headquarters in Holborn - the figures each with distinct expressions and postures, holding open newspapers are intended to evoke a diversity of perspectives - stretch along the length of the room.
That showstopper aside, I was particularly taken by a carved ebony portrait head on display in a nearby cabinet: Head of Samson Imade, c1949. Struck by the wonderfully dark aged wood of this masterwork and the young subject’s downcast eyes and sharp as cutglass cheekbones, it didn’t surprise me much to learn from the label that Enwonwu revered this wood and referred to it as ‘King Ebony’.
A video at the far end of the gallery recalls one of Enwonwu’s most famous sculptures, that of Queen Elizabeth (not included in the show) which was commissioned for a state visit she made to Nigeria in 1956. We also meet the many schools and movements that developed before and after Nigerian independence on 1st October 1960.
Among them, the Nsukka Art School, many of whose artists came of age after the 1967-1970 Nigerian Civil War (also known as the Biafran War) whose work reflected on the effects and after effects of war, notably its impact on the initial euphoria of independence; then too, the New Sacred Art Movement which emerged in the late 1950s founded by Austrian born painter and textile artist Susanne Wenger who drew on Yoruba deities and beliefs to explore the ritual power of art; and the late 20th century Oshogbo Art School. There are so many! It would need repeat visits to try to get a handle on them all, but that does not diminish the power of this exhibition.
Nike Davies-Okundaye, Animal World 1968.
© Nike Davies Okundaye. Kavita Chellaram. Image courtesy of kó, Lagos.
I loved it, its vitality, exuberance; I loved encountering the variety of Nigerian art and the challenges artists faced throughout the period covered. I also loved the challenges the exhibition gave me to try to begin to understand anything of the diversity, richness that this extraordinary exhibition invites its visitors to discover.
Exhibition curator Osei Bonsu, Curator of International Art at Tate Modern, who reminds us that as the Nigerian artists exhibited celebrate their own cultural heritage in the diverse pioneering ways revealed in the exhibition, also hopes that visitors will “take away a sense of that diversity.”
Nigerian Modenism
Tate Modern
Showing until: 10 May 2026